


Mercy Giver / Faith Killer

by ardett



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandonment, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 04:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11200443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardett/pseuds/ardett
Summary: Keith has Zarkon under his blade. He doesn't kill him.





	Mercy Giver / Faith Killer

**Author's Note:**

> I'm been sitting on this for almost a month trying to find the time to post it and trying to track down a beta, so I just decided to post it because I'm fed up with it...

Keith’s blade presses against Zarkon’s throat. The ruler of the universe on his knees before a mere boy, just turned seventeen, never received a high school diploma, never applied to college, never got a driver’s license, never wrote a job application, never got a tattoo, never voted, seventeen year old boy. A man, a myth, a monster brought to his knees by a seventeen year old boy. A dictator, a tyrant, a committer of genocide at the mercy of a boy who has never had sex, who has never gotten drunk, who has never been drafted, who has never been an adult because he _was_ an adult, only has been an adult because he _couldn’t_ be a child. Because children don’t fend for themselves. And children don’t kill.

He has had to fend for himself. And he is about to kill. And he is seventeen. And he hasn’t been a child in a long time.

There is no one else in the room. There are bodies strewn across the floor but they do not breath and they make no sound. Down the corridor, there are marks charred into the walls but the embers in them have long since gone out and there is no crackle of dying fire, no hiss of steam. Nor do the sword gouges in the tile made any noise. Beyond this room, space swallows sound and so all is silent.

All is silent except for his labored breaths and his warring heart. All is silent except the soft buzz of his bayard. All is silent except for the breaths that Zarkon still breathes. All is silent except for his shaking hand.

Zarkon smiles.

Keith’s blade drops.

And he runs.

 

 _“Keith? Keith, are you alright?”_ Keith flicks a switch in his lion and eases his way out of the Galra’s main ship to join Voltron’s retreat.

“I’m fine, Shiro.”

_“Where’s Zarkon?”_

“He got away.”

_“Did you see what ship he escaped on? He should have been in your sector if he was anywhere.”_

“I didn’t see. Sorry.” Keith mutes his helmet and lets Red take over the flight back to the castle. His breaths falter in his chest as he slowly curls into himself, head resting on the dashboard and arms pressed into his stomach. His eyelashes lay against one another wet and clumped. The cockpit is silent. And in the silence, he still shakes.

 

He feels Red land in her hanger, feels the colossal force of something large settling down. He makes no move to leave. He only curls in tighter, lip trembling and jaw aching with the effort to hold in the sound. It is not silent anymore. He is sobbing.

It is a weak and tremulous thing, watery and contained and suppressed, tucked into his chest and whispered into the floor.

Red prods at his mind and she _sees_ the same way Zarkon saw a moment before he smiled. _I’m sorry,_ Keith wants to say but his fingers are digging into his flesh as he tries to stay silent because the silence keeps him sane.

 _It’s not right,_ Red presses into his mind.

_I know, I know, I know but I can’t- please, I can’t-_

_It’s not right._

_I know._ Keith’s skin is sticky with tears. His eyes burn.

_If you knew, why did you do it?_

_I’m sorry._ His hands press into his eyes. _I’m sorry._ They do not wipe away the tears, only collect the salt water in the lines of his palms. _I’m sorry._

_You are not forgiven._

It feels like a part of Keith just… shuts off. The constant low growl in the back of his mind, the soft breath of another presence: gone.

“R-Red?” The lights in the cabin dim and shut off. The hum of living machine slowly rolls to a stop. _“Red?”_

There is no answer. Allura's voice crackles through a speaker in the hanger, muffled by the Red Lion's walls. It doesn't transmit through his helmet.

Keith wipes the tears from his face and begins to fumble for the manual door handle. His whole body feels hot and tight and compacted, like he has pressed himself together for too long with a pressure too great.

_“Keith? Keith, are you there?”_

“I'm here, Allura. What is it?” Keith's gaze strays to the Red Lion and his heart sinks. She is dead, no flicker of energy in her eyes, no movement in sinuous wires under her flank. She isn't waiting, not as she was when he first saw her. She is not a she anymore. She is an it and it is only a hunk of alien metal, monstrous and nonliving.

_“I'm sensing something wrong with the Red Lion. Did something happen to you two during the retreat?”_

“I- I don't know. I don't know if I'm-” _Is he not her paladin anymore?_ He takes a moment to catch his breath. He's painfully aware of the bayard at his back. He doesn't pull it out to see if it morphs into a sword, as it should for any red paladin. “She's not responding to me.”

_“There must be a reason. Come up to the main deck for now. We need to debrief.”_

“Alright, on my way.” He’s not.

He goes to his room, locks the door, showers, and goes to bed. Someone knocks on his door. Someone calls his name angrily. Someone asks for him with concern. He doesn’t answer.

 

(He can’t sleep because _he’s selfish, he’s selfish,_ but it’s too late. There’s no way for him to go back to fix it. He doesn’t want to fix. He just wanted to stay here. He wanted to stay here a little longer. Not forever. But… he just wanted to stay like this.

It wasn’t his choice. It shouldn’t have been his choice. But it was his choice.

He made his choice.)

 

There’s confrontation at breakfast. Allura comes at him first, a warning sprouting from her lips. “Keith. Where were you last night for our debriefing? Especially with the advent of your lion, we needed you there.”

Keith grabs a bowl. “The Red Lion shut down.”

“Shut down? Is she angry at you? Ignoring you, perhaps? The lions don’t just shut-”

“No, she shut down. Powered off. She’s dead.”

He goes to put goo into his bowl but in his gruffness, he knocks the bowl to the ground. It shatters, stinging shards scattering across the floor. “Fuck. _Fuck._ ” He doesn’t turn to face them, only braces his hands on the counter and stares at the broken pieces on the ground.

“Keith?”

“I saw Zarkon. Yesterday, I had him. I could have killed him. And I didn’t. I let him go. Because, because-” A hand tangles in his hair, the heel of his palm pressing into his eye socket. “I know that this is what we need to do but I don’t want this to end. I don’t want to go back to Earth. And I don’t- I don’t want any of you to go back either. I don’t want this to change. Of course I want to stop Zarkon but I want to have you guys more than I want to stop Zarkon. So I didn’t kill him. So we could keep fighting. And I’m sorry. But I don’t regret it.”

“What? You… no, you didn’t… you can’t...” Hunk’s voice strangles out of his throat. “How can you not regret it? Don’t you want to go back home?”

Keith turns away from those weeping eyes. “No.” he defends to the floor.

“We deserve to see our families again, Keith!” Lance’s words pitch high, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. “You don’t get to decide when we can be with them!”

Keith whirls on Lance, snarling, “I get to decide when I see my family! And you are my only family! Is it so wrong that I decided I wanted to be with you all a little longer? Wasn’t that my choice?”

Allura speaks. “Will you regret it if- if we can’t forgive you? If you are the reason everything changes and nothing can be the same again?”

Keith closes his eyes and grits his teeth.

“I think you will regret this, red paladin.”

“I'm _seventeen_ , Allura! I’m not your red paladin; I’m a kid! What don't you understand? I'm supposed to be selfish. I'm supposed to put my happiness before the rest of the world's, the universe’s. I shouldn't have to decide between keeping my family and killing someone!”

“Zarkon is not a someone-”

“ _I don't care!_ I don't care, Allura! I just wanted to keep my family!”

“Well you lost them.” Lance hisses and stalks out of the room.

Pidge does not move to get up, does not follow Lance. She sits very, very still, hands folded in her lap and eyes so lowered that the rim of her glasses slices through the middle of her pupils. Her voice is barely there at all. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

And just like that, all the fight drains out of Keith. His shoulders sink and his hands shake. He doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to fight in this war or this kitchen. He doesn’t want to fight either. But he knows nothing else. He knows no one else but these people here on this ship. And he will be nothing without them.

He could have chosen to become nothing for all the others to have their _somethings_ , but he is selfish. He has always been selfish.

He does not want to become nothing without them.

 

( _All is silent except for his labored breaths and his warring heart. All is silent except the soft buzz of his bayard. All is silent except for the breaths that Zarkon still breathes. All is silent except for his shaking hand._

_Zarkon smiles._

_Keith’s blade_ drips with blood, purple as age old royalty.

And it _runs_ down the hilt, across the tiles, into the darkness of space and between the stars, and down into the deserts of a green and blue planet.

It is silent in this shack and the blood pools here too, red as death against those pale wrists kissed by bayard blade.)

**Author's Note:**

> If Keith had killed Zarkon and everyone had gone back to Earth and their happy families, Keith would have killed himself.


End file.
